Battle of the Bridges, part three

Back to Battle of the Bridges, part two.

At 1:30 pm, the Kuwaiti Brigade commander decides to change orders to his troops, aware of being caught between the Hammurabi and Medina Divisions. His logistic line is cut and has a single way of escape east, on then desert stretch south of Jahra, towards Kuwait city, then south to Saudi Arabia.

Since the battalion closets to Mutla Ridge is not engaged, the Brigade Commander manages to change orders driving his APC directly to the battalion command post. The battalion will move east, parallel to the firing line and stop across the highway, then wait for the two battalion, the one facing north and the other facing south to disengage, then it will cover the retreat of the brigade.

At the same time this order is given, the Hammurabi Division Armored Brigade receives orders to attack. The mechanised he battalion on the right starts moving and engages the Kuwaitis.

The brand-new BMP2s and the AT platoon place some good shots on the Iraqi. BMP1s and BRDM3 stop and fire. There are some losses on both sides.

A view from the rear of the mechanised battalion engaging, Ammo and fuel are not enough to sustain a full day of fighting.

In the meantime the Medina Mechanised brigade has started moving out of Jahra to complete the encirclement of the Kuwaitis. One mechanised battalion and AT company moves towards the burning wrecks where, at about 8pm, the Iraqi tank battalion was destroyed.

There is still smoke in the area, with about 40 Iraqi tank wrecks.

The mechanised battalion commander, decides to dismount his troops and bring his APCs to rear before carrying the attack.

Here is a picture of the southern front of the engagement. The Kuwaitis have started moving away, The iraqis have two T72 battalions, with defence orders, waiting for an attack order which does not come. His officer seems very undecided (Third World army Order Change, bad dice rolls).

The first T72 battalion finally receives orders to attack. As soon at it reaches spotting range from the Kuwaiti FO, a salvo from the M109 battalion causes many tank hatches to close, Chieftains are very effective, ATGW fire adds to the killing.Poor Maintenance (House rule) of the battalion managed to bring in battle only two depleted companies, and one company is destroyed in a few minutes! The attack is stopped short (forced morale change to Defend).

On the other side of the battle, outside of Jahra, Kuwaity A4 Skyhawks attack the mechanised battalion. A SA13 salvo manages to divert the attack, which causes no casualties. Our house rule (Third World Poor Ground attack training) forced the player to attack with a single flight per move, maybe a concentrated attack of the available two flights might have been more effective.

At about 2pm the battle starts to precipitate for the Kuwaitis. The Iraqis manage to attack with another T72 battalion the Kuwaiti stopping force still in redeployment, on their right flank, and to bring more ATGW fire on the mechanised battalion on the extreme left.The net result is that the tow Kuwaiti battalion commander are forced to break-off from the engagement.The single Kuwaiti battalion facing north has no longer friendly troops on its rear, and he is about to be close assaulted by dismounted infantry !

The Kuwaiti SP artillery is still able to fire a last salvo before retiring, a lucky call from the battalion commander places defensive fire few hundred meters from the Kuwaiti defensive line. The dismounted Iraqi infantry is suppressed and cannot carry on the assault.Now the full weight of the Iraqi T72 brigade, one low strength battalion in reality pursues the two fleeing Kuwaiti battalions. Long range fire is effective on the flanks and rear and heavy casualties are caused. The break-off of one of the battalions becomes a rout.
The full Medina division advances, with logistics following.

The pursuing T72s manage to place shot also on the second battalion, which routs as well. There is a heavy price paid from the Kuwaiti brigade for not managing to place a covering force.

The single combat capable force now is the third battalion, saved with artillery barrage from being close assaulted. Its battalion commander decides to order break off (Voluntary break-off). Since only dismounted infantry is close by, and T72 are further south, this battalion manages to escape from the battle, even if with heavy losses (the entire Chieftain company was destroyed during the won engagement at 8 am with the Medina tank battalion).It is a defeat for the Kuwaitis. Having caused many casualties to the Iraqi, they have failed to bring safely to Saudi Arabia most of their troops.

The battle overall was very challenging, with Kuwaitis not having a real change to stop the Iraqis from the beginning. The choice on the Kuwaiti side to wait for the full brigade to be ready before moving to battle caused a deadly delay. The brigade was caught in the middle before carrying a full brigade assault towards Jahra.

The main two differences respect to the real battle were that the highways driving down from Mutla were highways and interconnect bridges with accesses limited by input and output lanes. For this reason all troops moving on highways should have had very limited escape routes from highways.

The second difference was caused by the choice of the Kuwaiti player to attack with a long delay, and not at sunrise.Iraqis were not caught in march order and no full scale attack could be done by the brigade.

The combination of our mods and Magegames mods in particular were very effective. During this game the logistics rules proved to scare the Kuwaiti commander, make him feel very uneasy of being cut from his lines.
Huge thanks with Magegames for helping us adopt most of his house rules, they are improving so much the already excellent Spearhead rules.